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old catholic

When I owned my gallery I remember a customer mentioning to me her father was a Catholic priest and he was married. I didn’t get it at time and figured she was confused about something. After twelve years of private Catholic schooling, I thought I knew Catholic priests were not allowed to marry. But there was something she left out of her story, something that I didn’t know about “Old” Catholics. I know this isn’t publishing related or even LGBT related, but I think it’s an interesting piece of information most people don’t know. And, there is an LGBT angle as well.

I was researching something last night for a book and stumbled across an article with a gay bishop and something they kept referring to as “Old” Catholic. At first I ignored it, but then it kept coming up with the search and I started reading more about Old Catholic as a religion and I went off on that proverbial tangent and wound up forgetting all about my research. As usual, the best source of information I found that made it easy was at Wiki. I’m not even going to try to explain it because it’s still so new to me.

The term Old Catholic Church originated with groups which separated from the Roman Catholic Church over certain doctrines, primarily concerned with Papal authority. These churches are not in full communion with the Holy See of Rome, but their Union of Utrecht of Old Catholic Churches is in full communion with the Anglican Communion[1] and a member of the World Council of Churches.[2] Nevertheless, according to Roman Catholic teaching, the Old Catholic churches of the Utrecht Union have maintained apostolic succession and valid (albeit illicit) sacraments. The formation of the Old Catholic communion of Germans, Austrians and Swiss began in 1870 at a public meeting held in Nuremberg under the leadership of Ignaz von Döllinger, following the First Vatican Council. Four years later episcopal succession was established with the consecration of an Old Catholic German bishop by a prelate of the Church of Utrecht. In line with the “Declaration of Utrecht” of 1889, they accept the first seven ecumenical councils and doctrine formulated before 1054, but reject communion with the pope and a number of other Roman Catholic doctrines and practices. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church notes that since 1925 they have recognized Anglican ordinations, that they have had full communion with the Church of England since 1932 and have taken part in the ordination of Anglican bishops.You can read more here at wiki.

The Old Catholic Church of America in expression of its global mission to preach the word of Jesus Christ as a Catholic and Apostolic Church welcomes all people, regardless of life situation, as children of God and seeks to love and serve the Christ in one another. We are committed to building supportive and loving communities of faith as guided by the Holy Spirit.We will provide to our developing communities of faith, leadership, training, evangelization and pastoral care, for the facilitating of ministry within the community and its outreach to others.

As far as I can tell, you can be gay and become a priest, or even a bishop, if you are “Old” Catholic. According to this article, however, most traditional Catholics do not recognize “Old” Catholics or even take them seriously. And this article mentions that unless it were an absolute emergency, a Catholic would never receive sacraments from an “Old” Catholic priest.

If anyone has anything to add to this, feel free.

Gay Marriage Australia

In a not so uplifting story I read this morning, it seems that a high court struck down same-sex marriage laws in Australia yesterday and gay marriages that have been performed are now invalid.

Around 20 gay couples had tied the knot since December 7, when Australia’s first same-sex marriage laws came into force in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The first ceremonies were celebrated a minute after midnight (8 a.m. ET Friday).Aside from the obvious sadness and frustration I feel for those in Australia, and for those who were recently married only to be stabbed in the back by this high court, I’ve posted about how these things can be tricky and how legislation must be written carefully so same-sex marriage laws can’t be challenged and overturned. In other words, before we start jumping up and down and celebrating with woots and cheers all over social media, we need to know we’re going to be safe for the long term. In Australia the conservatives challenged the law based on the grounds that it conflicted with federal law. They won. It happens all the time. In this post I wrote about gay marriage in Hawaii, I mentioned Jo Jordon, a lesbian representative in Hawaii, who wasn’t all that ready to rush into legalizing gay marriage in Hawaii without writing up solid legislation.

“I’m not here to protect the big churches or the little churches, I’m saying we can’t erode what’s currently out there. We don’t want to scratch at the religious protections at all, because if we don’t create a measure that’s bulletproof, or as close to bulletproof as possible, then the measure will go to the courts. And they will interpret it however that may be. A judge will make assumptions and make a ruling, and that will become the law of the land. So you really want us to create the legislation.”I have to admit that I’m no expert in this department. But in the same respect I have seen gay marriage legalized before, and then made illegal once again thanks to a snag, weak legislation, and a different judge. I’d rather not see this happen again.

In any event, same-sex marriage is a complicated issue and I hate to see things move backward like they did in Australia.

This I don’t think was ever meant to be taken seriously by any means. But a novelty store in Canada was selling what were called Gay Away pills…pills to cure people from being gay…and they were removed from the shelves after a number of complaints.

The packaging for the ‘new extra strength’ pills states that they ‘stop the craving for misbehaving,’ and that Gay Away ‘cures gayness’ and are ‘for real fruit cakes.’ Instructions on the back of the packet state ‘just two pills a day will have you off the stick and in the bush in a matter of weeks.’

My only comment here is to authors: watch what you write nowadays. Watch every single word and line. There’s no such thing as a sense of humor anymore in these politically correct days of “yummy, lol, OMG” social media updates.

Ryan Field is the author of over 100 published works of LGBT fiction, the best selling Virgin Billionaire series, a pg rated hetero romance that was featured on The Home Shopping Network titled, "Loving Daylight," and a few more works of full length fiction with a pen name. He's worked in publishing for twenty years as a writer, editor, and associate editor. His work has been in Lambda Award winning anthologies and he's self-published a few novels with Ryan Field Press. You can reach him by leaving a comment here, or at rfieldj@aol.com